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LYS Podcast Episode 4
'-Intro music-' AMANDA MORRISON’S NARRATION/VOICE OVER (AM V/O): When we left you last time, we had just heard a recording featuring the voices of Doctor Weylen Taylor and an unnamed man. One of the audio files, which we received via email from somebody who didn’t provide any contact information, in a zip file titled ‘Patient 80’. There are more recordings from Patient 80 and we’re going to be playing them throughout this podcast series. You’re listening to the Leap Year Society. I’m Amanda Morrison. Stay with us. '-Intro music ends-' AM V/O: This recording appears to be taken from another session between Dr. Weylen Taylor and Patient 80. '-Recording-' WEYLEN TAYLOR (WT): Could you describe how you’re feeling this morning? PATIENT 80: I’m cold. WT: I’ll see if I can turn up the heat for you. How are you sleeping? 80: I don’t think they’re coming back. WT: Who? 80: The other ones. WT: The aliens? 80: Maybe? Yes. WT: What makes you say that? 80: I can’t hear voices, feel them pressing on my head. WT: When was the last time you felt the “others”? 80: It’s been a long time. WT: When you did feel the “others”, did the feeling of pressure or voices happen in the day as well as the night? 80: Sometimes. WT: When? 80: I don’t want to say. WT: Please. 80: No. WT: We can’t help you if you aren’t going to help yourself. 80: Sometimes, after you make me stay awake, after sleep deprivation. I don’t know myself. WT: Do the “others” visit during your sleep deprivation therapy? 80: No. WT: Are you telling me the truth? 80: Yes! WT: When you were admitted, you were experiencing…something, something that you called the “passenger”. 80: Please don’t make me do it again! WT: But you haven’t experienced this *mumbles* you haven’t experienced this “passenger” again, have you? 80: Please! WT: You know we are doing this for your benefit and the only reason is for you, right, you understand that? 80: No. They’re not coming back. WT: You must understand all our therapies are designed with one thing in mind; your mental health and well-being. 80: (sounding increasingly agitated) I’m not feeling like myself! WT: Your wife and your parents brought you here to us. You were losing time, walking. We’re just trying to help you find your way home again. 80: I don’t think it’s helping. WT: What do you mean? 80: I mean, I don’t think the passengers are coming back. WT: What makes you say that? 80: Because you’re pushing them away. WT: What do you mean? 80: They don’t like the loud sounds and the water. They hate the electricity and they especially hate sleep deprivation. WT: Are you sure you’re not just expressing your own feelings about your treatment schedule? 80: No! WT: We’re going to make you feel better. I promise. Do you understand? 80: Yeah. '-End of recording-' AM V/O: We’ll be playing some more of those recordings soon, but right now we’re going to dig a little bit more into Dr. Weylen Taylor. MITCH SORENSON (MS): So as you know, I’ve been monitoring the web for anything related to what we’ve been looking into. AM: Google alerts! MS: So much more than Google alerts, but yes, also Google alerts. AM: Haha, what did you find? MS: Well, ok. I have to admit I did call Colin for assistance once I found it. AM: We should get him on the line as well. Amanda dials Colin's number. COLIN ORRY (CO): Hello. AM: Hey Colin! CO: Hey! MS: Hi Colin. AM: I’m here with Mitch! CO: Hey everyone! AM: So, Mitch tells me you guys may have found something related to Dr. Taylor? CO: It definitely feels related. AM: What is it? CO: It’s a Wayback Machine entry, Geocity style. AM: Wow! CO: Yeah! It looks like it was a partially built website from the 90’s. The search term Mitch found luck with was “walking hypnagogia”, but it wasn’t Dr. Taylor’s article, surprisingly. It was another person referencing the term and crediting it to Taylor, of course, but “walking hypnagogia” wasn’t the central focus of this web-page. AM: What was the central focus? CO: Old demigods. AM: Ok…what? CO: Well, the web-page is a partially written thesis. It looks like the writer was trying to keep her work backed up. AM: What makes you say that? CO: The first page of her website. She says it right there in a note to herself. AM: Her? CO: Harriet Evanson. AM: It’s her thesis. CO: Yes. It looks like she was using the website as a kind of back up. She had lost an earlier version of her thesis previously when her computer died. AM: That makes sense, I guess. CO: Kind of smart, actually. Pre-cloud behaviour. AM: Ok, so what does this fragment of a website tell us? MS: Right, well this is where it gets really interesting. AM: How so? MS: She references walking hypnagogia when speaking about something…else. AM: What? MS: Demonic possession. Am: Ok… MS: She was serious. AM: About demons? MS: Yeah, although, for some reason she calls them demigods. AM: And this is a scientific thesis from a doctoral candidate? MS: Not necessarily. AM: No? MS: No. The small section we have reads more like she’s an aspiring anthropologist. AM: What does demonic possession have to do with walking hypnagogia? MS: I have no idea. AM: So what have we learned from this website? MS: We’ve learned that there was a woman named Harriet Evanson, who’s writing a thesis on demigods and what their manifestation might look like in the real world. AM: How does this help us with Dr. Weylen Taylor? MS: Well, I’m not sure. AM: Ok, so… MS: So we ask Harriet Evanson. AM: You found her? MS: You betcha! CO: Um… MS: Ok, fine, Colin found her. CO: Yeah…thanks. MS: I wasn’t sure you were still there! CO: Oh, I’m here. AM: Thanks Colin! CO: Anytime. AM V/O: So, Colin found Harriet Evanson. She did eventually finish her thesis, however, her adviser convinced her to shift her focus slightly. She ended up handing in a thesis relating to Ouija Boards, and their cultural significance. She did, however, remember Dr. Weylen Taylor. '-Phone call with Harriet Evanson-' HARRIET EVANSON (HE): Hello? AM: Hello, Harriet? HE: Hi! Is this Amanda? AM: It is! HE: How are you doing? AM: I’m good! Thanks for taking the time to speak with me. HE: It’s not every day somebody digs up an old website of mine from my college days and calls me up out of the blue! AM: I’ll bet! HE: Your friend said that this is for the radio? AM: It’s a podcast. HE: Oh! My wife loves podcasts! AM: Oh, that’s great! HE: She made us listen to something about a girl that was murdered. AM: Sadly, that doesn’t narrow it down. HE: Right. AM: So I’d love to just jump right in, if you don’t mind? HE: Not at all! Go right ahead. AM: Great. So, what do you remember about Dr. Weylen Taylor? HE: Well, I suppose I should start with what I remember about my first thesis project. It was a long time ago. AM: Sounds good. HE: Well, as I remember it, I was really obsessed with possession cases. I’m not sure how much you know about the demigods? AM: Assume nothing. HE: Ok, well, are you a spiritual person Amanda? AM: I suppose I’m what you might call…agnostic? HE: So, no. AM: Well…I don’t think we can really know for sure, either way. HE: Oh, but we can! AM: How is that? HE: They’re everywhere! AM: The demigods? HE: Yes. AM: Um… HE: But they don’t normally care about the affairs of humans. AM: Oh. Ok. HE: But if they want to, they can find their way in when we are vulnerable. AM: And this belief is what connected your thesis to Dr. Weylen Taylor? HE: Yes. Dr. Taylor was working on something similar. He was studying people who’d been affected by them. AM: By these demigods? HE: Yes, although he didn’t call them that. AM: No? HE: No. He believed it was some kind of multiple personality disorder that he could trigger under extreme duress. He thought when these people, I guess, entered the state between sleep and wakefulness, you know… AM: Hypnagogia. HE: Exactly! Yes. He believed that in this state, his subjects were vulnerable to a kind of…hostile takeover. I believe he referred to it as a “stepping” or slipping into something? AM: Stepping? HE: Something like that, yeah. AM: Have you ever heard the name “The Leap Year Society”? HE: Uh…no, not that I can remember, sorry. AM: Is there anything else you can tell me? HE: You know, I met him once. AM: Doctor Taylor? HE: Yes! AM: What can you tell me about that meeting? HE: Well, it was at his office. He was really nice in his correspondence, if not a bit too fastidious for me. AM: Haha, right. HE: But in real life, I found a much different impression! AM: How do you mean? HE: Well, in person he was more… wild. AM: Wild? HE: Yeah. I know it sounds weird, but on the phone and in letters he was professional, leaning more on psychology and medicine, more scientific. AM: But this wasn’t the case in person? HE: Well, no! But I suppose it may have had something to do with that man. AM: What man? HE: The possessed man. AM: Possessed? HE: Oh, you should look it up! I think the exorcism video is on Youtube somewhere! AM: Would it be possible for you to send me a link? AM V/O: Sure! I should be able to find it! It’s the one where he’s staring at the camera and it’s dark, and well, it’s actually mostly audio. It’s really weird though. AM: If you don’t mind forwarding me that link, I’d really appreciate it! HE: No problem! AM: Anything else you can tell me about Dr. Taylor? HE: Not really, um…he was trying to observe another state of consciousness. I think he believed it was important work. AM: Right. HE: Oh wait, there was one more thing. AM: What’s that? HE: Well, when I told him that I believe in the existence of other beings, the demigods, he didn’t even blink! AM: What are you implying? HE: Just that my idea didn’t faze him at all. In fact, I had the very distinct feeling that he’d considered the same thing himself. AM V/O: So, that was Harriet Evanson. As of this moment, we have no way of confirming that she actually ever met with Taylor, although, we certainly don’t have any reason to doubt her. Which brings us back to Dr. Weylen Taylor. What exactly were the circumstances surrounding his mysterious disappearance? We know he disappeared from a locked bedroom, and there was no evidence he ever left his house. But that’s all we know. MS: Dr. Weylen Taylor never showed up for work at Berkeley University on June 7th, 2017. AM: How do we know? MS: I spoke with the vice chancellor. She told me that Dr. Taylor just didn’t show up for work one day. AM: He didn’t call? MS: Nothing. No word for days. Eventually they were informed that Dr. Taylor had been reported missing by his neighbour. AM: Friends or family? MS: There’s allegedly a sibling somewhere, but I haven’t been able to confirm that fact. AM: Foul play! MS: The vice chancellor told me that she was told that the police always suspect foul play when it’s such a clean disappearance, but outside of the locked room aspects, there was never any evidence that anything sketchy happened. AM: What about the circumstances surrounding his life at the time. MS: Nobody at the University could think of anything. He kept to himself, you know, outside of his work. AM: Right. So, what did they have to say about his work, about him torturing people in the basement? MS: They told me that as far as they knew, Dr. Taylor was doing sleep research and sleep research only. AM: Right. MS: You know, they actually invited us to check out his lab, if you’re interested. AM: Really? MS: Uh huh. AM: I’m interested. MS: I thought you might be. AM V/O: So, we were invited to the university to check out Dr. Taylor’s research area. Before we made it there, however, two things happened. First, I received and email from Harriet Evanson. She sent me a link to the exorcism video she mentioned earlier. Second, I believe I’ve figured out the weird numbers on the bottom of that poster from the telephone pole. I went through every possible numeric combination and every possible code and translation possibility I could come up with and found nothing. It made sense that these numbers were letters in some kind of code, but what kind? I was looking at the wall of Dr. Taylor’s laboratory, which we’ll visit in our next episode, when I saw it. Base 8. It was something I remembered from an elective I took in programming. We tried splitting the numbers we found on that poster into groups of two and three and decoding them using a standard Base 10 system. What if they were using Base 8? So, what happened when we split the groups of numbers into three and input those numbers into an online octal converter? Well, we found something! MS: What the hell is Bolchester Deep? AM: I have no idea. AM V/O: We Googled it and something came up; a defunct website for something called “The Bolchester Alliance”. There wasn’t much there. It appeared to be some kind of auction site or collector’s webpage. It was very strange. There was a hidden index page with some kind of information forum with strange questions. I entered my information and pressed send. Within seconds, I had a response. We’ll go over that response next episode. Right now, I’m going to play the part of the exorcism video that Harriet Evanson sent me. Just a quick warning: this stuff is creepy. '-Exorcism Video-' Noise as the Possessed Man (PM) thrashes against restraints Man 1: Is he conscious? Woman 1: He appears to be. M1: Ok, take him back. Sound of steps as they get closer M1: Wait. W1: He’s in no condition. M1: Just a minute- Patient 80: (In Hebrew???) are going to regret what you've done to this poor guy M1: What’s he saying? W1: I think it’s Russian. ???: Bring me the book. W1: What’s he talking about? Patient 80: (In French) Je ne veux me répéter pas will not repeat myself Moaning/yelling/general chaos ensues as the Patient 80 continues to thrash about. AM V/O: You’ve been listening to The Leap Year Society. I’m Amanda Morrison. Thank you for listening. (Rest of outro) END --- ' ' NOTES: * First mention of “stepping” as a concept * First mention of The Bolchester Alliance * Harriet claims not to know or have heard about the LYS, yet the screenshots of her thesis include reference to LYS pamphlets being present at her library * Patient 80 at one point believed the “Others” to be aliens